Diamond
by InnerEssence
Summary: Things go wrong while on a mission making Sam realise sometimes being part of the SGC means giving up too much. Set season 5 or before. please read and review!
1. Chapter 1

The day Sam Carter resigned she felt the weight of the world lift from her shoulders. She didn't want to carry that load anymore. The combined burden of honour, duty and responsibility had crushed parts of her humanity into oblivion and caused other parts of her to become as solid as diamonds. She gathered the last vestiges of her personal belongings in her lab and moved towards the door to leave for the final time.

She knew people didn't understand why she was leaving. Why she felt the need to leave. Whispers of dereliction of duty haunted her steps down the corridors of the SGC. While her team… her friends stood by her to the world, in the depth of their eyes she saw reproach, abandonment. And in his eyes she saw disappointment and anger. Yes he was angry at her for leaving them, for abandoning the fight, for not getting over what had happened…

So when after a month of nothing, she stumbled onto his doorstep she didn't know what to expect.

She stood in the damp, black of the night and waited. Maybe he wasn't even home. She had no idea what day it was; over the past month she'd learnt to measure the passage of time with raindrops.

When he did open the door, she found she had nothing to say. He watched her with burning eyes as she cradled her form in an attempt to protect herself from the cold as much as from his gaze.

"Carter? Is there something I can do for you?"

Finally she managed to drag her eyes from somewhere around his feet to meet his eyes. But she found she couldn't hold his gaze. "I… can I come in?"

He wasn't going to make this easy; she always knew Jack O'Neill could hold a grudge. She didn't even know why she had come. What had she hoped to achieve? There was nothing left for her here.

"You hate me." It wasn't a question. He didn't deny it.

They hadn't made it very far into his house. "I should leave."

But those words seemed to spur him into action. His hand shot out to grab her wrist. "No. I'm not letting you walk away from me again." His firm voice, the granite in his eyes and the pressure on her wrist told her he was serious.

He tugged at her wrist pulling her closer. "Why are you here Carter?" he asked, eyes narrowed, voice dangerously low.

She didn't know why. How could she explain to him that there was nothing left of her. That she felt like she was suffocating in a cocoon of apathy, that she just wanted to feel something… anything.

"I don't know" she whispered. He pulled her even closer the heat of his body impossible to ignore.

"I think you do, Carter." He held her eyes mesmerised. The anger rolling off his body in waves enveloped her, the heat of it forcing her to respond.

Maybe she did know why she was here.

TBC…


	2. Chapter 2

When they finally fell into his bed, she realised that was the reason she'd arrived at his doorstep.

She wanted his anger, his ruthless manipulation of her body. So she embraced the fire emanating from his core and hoped she would burn in it. And she wasn't disappointed, heat danced along her nerve endings, molten ash heavy in the pit of her womb.

She was grateful that his caresses weren't soft or tender. That his fingers bruised her flesh and gripped her hair.

When she responded on a gasp "Sir, please…" she didn't know if it was a plea for him to slow down or not. The hand in her hair tightened forcing her head back and her eyes to meet his. Through the haze she tried to focus.

"Jack, Carter. You resigned remember?" he'd gone still above her, so close. Skin to skin but she needed more. "It's Jack… say it!"

She whimpered trying to move beneath him but he only pinned her down harder. "Say my name Carter, I want to hear you say it!"

She finally acquiesced unable to stand it any longer, needing him to stop the need clawing inside of her. "Jack…Jack. Oh God… please"

He moved her knees apart and thrust into her, hard and fast, and she screamed…

It was over all too quick the moments taking with them the feelings of unreality. They lay there trying to get their breathing under control and trying not to think about what this meant.

His anger had dissipated somewhere along the way, burnt out from its own shear explosiveness.

"You did what you had to do, Sam. It wasn't your fault. Let it go… let it go before the guilt makes you lose yourself. Come back to us." he said it finally. His words hung on the wind somewhere and for a moment he wondered if she'd heard him.

The single tear that escaped from under her lashes was testament that she had. "I…I can't."

How could she explain to him that she wasn't ready for absolution, for forgiveness? That she couldn't go back to the SGC where doing what she had to do meant the death of a child. A sweet, innocent child that she, the intelligent one, the smart one, couldn't save. She'd pulled the trigger, only because it was the only way to stop the thing inside the child, but she'd pulled the trigger nonetheless.

When she threw on her clothes and left, he didn't stop her.


	3. Chapter 3

It became habit.

She'd come to him to in the night and he never had the strength or resolve to turn her away.

He'd be sitting in front of the TV blindly watching some hockey rerun pretending he wasn't waiting for her. The colours on the screen would blur like acrylic paint on a canvas while his mind thought about all the words he should say to her, that he would say to her that night.

When she finally arrived, she always looked so worn out so haggard. He wondered what punishment she was putting herself through, but he never asked. And all those words he had carefully rehearsed left his mind. With the self-imposed ban they seemed to have on so many topics there seemed to be nothing else to say.

So they'd sit next to each other and finish whatever he had been pretending to watch. He wanted to ask her what she did all day, but the words stuck somewhere in his chest and refused to be spoken.

Lacking the words he would just watch her, not really bothering to hide his gaze. And if she noticed his eyes scrutinizing her she never said anything, instead staring resolutely at the screen.

His gaze would slide along her form, starting from her face. She was thinner now than before and her eyes seemed that much bigger, but they'd lost their sparkle. Her lips weren't as quick to smile; in fact he wondered when the last time was he'd seen her smile.

Sliding lower his eyes would find her delicate throat and then the line of her shoulders and lower still the swell of her breasts. The sight of which invariably evoked a response deep inside him. She was everything he had wanted for so long and the anger he had felt before couldn't compete with that. She was so different to before, a shadow really, but he could never deny how beautiful she was.

So he would end up touching her just to make sure she was real and not a ghost. His caresses tentative, questioning. She never responded to his touch at first and he'd feel compelled to ask "Is this what you want?" or "Are you sure?" whispered against her skin.

He always hoped she'd say no, then he'd be forced to stop and maybe they'd finally have that talk they'd been running from. But she always said yes. And as if to take away all his doubts she'd take him by the hand into his bedroom.

And after that the pace would become somewhere beyond frenzied. Too fast really too mean much, yet he could never get her to slow down.

The things she did with her lips and hands would drive him crazy. She would be all around him at the same time, like quick silver, too fast for him to hold on to.

Then she'd be lowering herself onto him, her heat surrounding him, she'd be too tight and he knew she wasn't ready. "God…Sam…slow down. You're not ready… I don't want to hurt you" all the words he would choke out while her tightness made him dizzy.

He hated that he didn't do more, that even though he knew it hurt, he didn't stop her.

And later she'd leave sometime in the night.

It wasn't always that way though, sometimes it was worse. The worst days were when he'd come back from a mission where more good people died, where he'd killed more people then he could count.

Those days he'd feel all the anger at her returning, for leaving him to deal with all the shit on his own, for only coming to him for sex.

And then it would be like the first time again, when it was all about taking out his anger on her. Those days he wouldn't ask if she was ready, wouldn't care if he hurt her.

She never protested, not once, he wondered if she felt she deserved it.

And afterwards he would hate himself even more.


End file.
